N109 - Oct 18
Open cityThe city is a living organism, a place where new realities are born. What urban planning and what governance does a global city require to deal with its inhabitants’ changing needs? It’s time to rethink both how we build and how we inhabit: from the design of our physical space to the social and political architecture that guides our coexistence.
DossierOpen city
The change in era we’re currently experiencing is altering many of the values, conceptual schemes and balances upon which post-war Europe was built. The “Ciutat Oberta” (Open City)...
Much of the urban design applied around the world follows the technocratic model of the Athens Charter. This is a homogenous, one-size-fits-all model that provides simple solutions to...
Judgements that the cité has ‘failed’ to open up are thus Janus-faced: one side of the coin shows angry populist prejudice, but on the other face can appear the self-satisfied...
Although people know what they need and want, yet architecture spins into navel-gazing and drifts farther and farther from the possibility of substantive contribution to the communities...
For the first time in many years, the term “fascism” is being used in the United States to refer to the rhetorical return of white supremacists, and the threat it represents for the...
From a feminist perspective, cities need to respond to the human need to inhabit, not to accumulate wealth. They need to allow people to live where they were born and to access the type...
Emancipatory political transformation doesn’t just require certain political and legal tools (such as well-established democratic institutions or certain material conditions), but also...
The large global metropolis embodies the spirit of our era, while small and medium-sized deindustrialized cities are sceptical about the future, with nostalgia for a past they identify...
Just as borders are accepted as an inevitable part of our reality, it seems increasingly difficult to imagine a migration policy that doesn’t involve an unyielding defence of the...
Three decades of neoliberal deregulation from the wild side of the market have impeded and disfigured opportunities for urban democracy and have seized the city from its people. In spite...
The space we inhabit, the environment that surrounds us, shapes our behaviour and everything about us: our character, our ethos. That’s what ethics is about. It isn’t just about...
Other contents
Barcelona Metròpolis takes on a new era with a new format, a new design and a new digital space. The new Barcelona Metròpolis wants to be a tool for...
Lita Cabellut
Anyone who is close to her will tell you that watching her create is a work of art in itself. Her studio is the scene of thousands of creative battles, where paint...
Twenty years after her death, the work of the poet and fiction author who was ‘three times a rebel’ in her own words, is seeing a renewed vitality in the political...
There are an infinite number of borders in Barcelona. Social borders, that separate our ways of life and the possibilities they have to offer (the ‘Upper Diagonal’...
We live in turbulent times, and culture is not immune to the upheaval caused by the change of era in which we find ourselves.
The European Union has tabled a new directive on copyright to harmonize different aspects of the European digital market.
Eva Baltasar
She was unjustly obscure until only very recently and that may have been largely due to poetry.
Music is like water that slips through your fingers: just what is the nature of this ephemeral thing, held to be the most abstract and universal language?
Gala was the wife and muse of Salvador Dalí, as well as his secretary and salesperson. Lee Miller was a stunningly beautiful fashion model who worked with Man Ray and...
The exhibit A Certain Darkness can be seen until January 5 at the CaixaForum.
Writing about Barcelona is a way of recuperating it. This form of resistance has inspired a great deal of literature, be they collections of oral stories, memories or...
Marta Rojals has taken on the challenge in the American style, using the raw materials of our own local reality. It’s what we might call the “great Catalan novel”. ...
Forged iron, ceramics, wood, glass, pavement, coats of arms, clocks, bells… Art historian Francesc Fontbona edited Les arts aplicades a Barcelona (The...
“If the hospital were taken away, it’d change Barcelona’s soul.” The first time I read those words, written by Doctor Josep Cornudella about the Hospital de la Santa...
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